Topic 15 - Postwar America (1945-1975)

Lesson 3 - Eisenhower and Postwar America

In the decades after World War II, the United States experienced a boom like no other in its history. The population mushroomed, the economy prospered, and the American nation enjoyed the highest standard of living it had ever known.

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This 1950s photograph shows traffic on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, New York. How did parkways and highways change the American landscape?

Guiding Questions

What postwar problems did Americans face?
What factors contributed to the economic and baby booms of the 1950s?
How did American lifestyles change in the 1950s?

Vocabulary

Academic Vocabulary

Postwar Prosperity

When the war ended in 1945, two thirds of all American men between the ages of 18 and 34 were in uniform. Experts feared that with wartime production ceased, many returning soldiers might not find jobs. Unemployment would rise, and the economy would tumble.

Addressing Economic Issues

Even before the war ended, Congress passed the GI Bill of Rights to help returning veterans. (The abbreviation GI refers to “government issued” materials and came to refer to soldiers, too.) The GI Bill of Rights authorized billions of dollars to help veterans set up farms and businesses. Many GIs received loans to pay for college or a new home. The law also provided a full year of unemployment benefits for veterans who could not find work.

Inflation, or a general decline in the value of money, was a major postwar problem. During the war, the government had controlled prices and wages. When the controls ended, Americans who had sacrificed during the war were eager to buy. The rising demand for goods led to price increases, which led workers to demand higher wages. When employers refused, labor unions called strikes.

President Harry Truman was sympathetic to workers but feared that higher wages would only add to inflation. He urged strikers to return to work.

The Election of 1948

In 1946, labor strikes and soaring prices had helped Republicans win majorities in both the House and the Senate for the first time since the 1920s. Now, as the election of 1948 approached, Truman and the Democrats seemed doomed. Unhappy liberals and conservatives deserted Truman to form parties of their own. The Republicans confidently nominated Governor Thomas Dewey of New York for President.

Truman fought back. During his campaign, Truman traveled thousands of miles across the country by train. At every stop, he attacked the Republicans as “do-nothings” and “gluttons of privilege.” When all the votes were counted, Truman won a surprise victory over Dewey.

The Fair Deal

During his presidency, Truman proposed a new round of reform he called the Fair Deal. He wanted to extend the liberal policies of his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In Congress, the Fair Deal faced heavy opposition from conservative Democrats and Republicans. Only a few of the proposals passed: a higher minimum wage, expanded Social Security benefits, and loans for buying low-cost houses. Congress rejected most of Truman’s reforms, including a bold plan to provide government-financed health insurance.

Analyze Political Cartoons This cartoon shows President Truman announcing his Fair Deal program of liberal reform.

Analyze Information Is the Fair Deal program portrayed in a positive light or a negative one in this cartoon? Explain.

A Moderate Takes Office

In 1952, Truman chose not to run for reelection. Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. Republicans chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a hero of World War II. Eisenhower, known as “Ike,” promised to end the conflict in Korea and lead Americans through the Cold War.

For the first time, television played a major role in a presidential campaign. Instead of long speeches, Republicans used 20-second TV “spots” of Ike responding to questions from hand-picked citizens. Complained one critic: “It was selling the President like toothpaste.” But it worked: Eisenhower won a landslide victory. In 1956, voters re-elected Ike to a second term of office.

Like most Republicans, President Eisenhower believed in limiting federal spending and reducing federal regulation of the economy. He called his political course the “straight road down the middle.” He favored cutting the federal budget overall, but expanding Social Security benefits and some other New Deal programs.

Baby Boom

During the Great Depression and World War II, many Americans had put off having families. When the war ended and prosperity returned, the number of births soared. Population experts called the phenomenon a baby boom.

In the 1930s, the population of the United States had grown by only 9 million. In the 1940s, it grew by 19 million, and in the 1950s by an astounding 29 million. Many couples married younger than was common during the Depression years, had an average of three children, and completed their families by their late twenties.

Improvements in healthcare and nutrition for both children and pregnant women contributed to the baby boom. Infants were born healthier, and fewer children died from childhood diseases.

Analyze Charts These graphs show why the baby boom generation had such a large impact on the nation.

Synthesize Visual Information The text says that married couples had an average of three children, yet the graph shows the average number of persons under age 18 per family was less than 1.5. Explain how this is possible.

Prosperity Abounds

In addition to the baby boom, there was an economic expansion in the postwar years. When an economy expands, more goods are produced and sold, and more jobs are created.

Federal projects increased factory production. The government spent more money to build new roads, houses, and schools. In the middle of the Cold War, government spending on military goods spurred the economy, too.

New technology added to the boom by promoting steady rises in productivity, or the average output per worker. Corporations began using computers to perform calculations and keep records.

High productivity allowed the United States to manufacture and consume, or use, more goods than any other country. The victory in World War II and the booming economy created a sense of public confidence in the United States. American citizens enjoyed a postwar prosperity that saw significant job growth throughout much of the nation.

Analyze Graphs The graph shows how the number of people owning homes increased between 1940 and 1960.

Generate Explanations Explain how the data on home ownership relates to standard of living.

READING CHECK

Identify Cause and Effect What factors contributed to the postwar prosperity?

What Was Life Like in the 1950s?

The economic boom raised Americans’ standard of living, a measurement of how well people live based on the amount of goods, services, and leisure time people have. Rising wages enabled Americans to buy washing machines, vacuum cleaners, televisions, automobiles, and many other consumer goods.

Public confidence in the United States replaced many of the financial worries associated with the Great Depression and World War II. Few Americans worried that they were saving little. Instead, most Americans enjoyed a life in which they had more money to spend. This consumer spending reshaped the country.

The New Suburbs

With their newfound wealth, many people bought homes in the suburbs, or communities outside the cities. The GI Bill encouraged home building in the suburbs by offering low-interest loans to veterans. During the 1950s, suburbs grew 40 times faster than cities.

Builder William Levitt pioneered a new way of building suburban houses. He bought large tracts of land and then divided them into small, equal-sized lots. On each lot, he built a house identical to every other house in the tract. Using pre-assembled materials, teams of carpenters, plumbers, and electricians could put up a Levitt house in 16 minutes. These mass-produced houses cost much less to build than custom-made houses.

Levitt began his first big project in 1947 on Long Island, where he put up 17,000 new homes. It was the largest housing development ever built by an American. Levitt called the project Levittown. As in a great many areas of the country, African Americans were barred from owning or renting in Levittown. Levitt presumed that if he sold to blacks, whites would not buy.

Shopping centers with modern department stores sprang up near the suburban housing developments. Nationwide there were eight shopping centers in 1946. By the end of the 1950s, there were 4,000. No longer did consumers have to travel to the city to buy what they wanted.

As millions flocked to the suburbs, central cities began a slow decline. Suburbs and their shopping centers drained cities of businesses and taxes. Since most of those who moved were white, some critics complained that the United States was turning into a nation where African Americans lived in cities and whites lived in the suburbs.

Moving South

Americans also flocked to the Sunbelt, a region stretching across the southern rim of the country. States from Florida to Texas to California began to experience dramatic growth.

For Americans on the move, the Sunbelt, both then and now, had many lures: a warm climate; good jobs; a prosperous economy based on agriculture, oil, and electronics; and national defense industries. The workforce included recent immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Like many ambitious newcomers, they were willing to work hard to establish new lives in the United States.

GEOGRAPHY SKILLS

During the 1950s, many Americans moved south to find good jobs and warm weather.

Movement Which states experienced the greatest population increases due to migration?

Infer Why do you think these states were called the “Sunbelt”?

Taking to the Road

During the 1950s, cars became more important to daily life. People living in the suburbs or the Sunbelt usually needed a car to drive to work. By 1960, nine out of ten families living in the suburbs owned a car. Since few people bought foreign cars, the American automobile companies, such as General Motors, profited greatly.

To accommodate the increase in automobiles, the federal government built thousands of miles of highways. In 1956, Congress passed the

Federal Aid Highway Act. This act called for a network of high-speed roads linking the nation. It set aside $41 billion to build 40,000 miles of highway.

The new highway system boosted the economy, especially the automobile and trucking industries. Americans could travel more easily for business or pleasure. As a result, a new roadside culture of motels and fast-food restaurants emerged.

Analyze Images Construction of new homes in the suburbs like that shown here surged in the years after World War II.

Synthesize Visual Information Why do you think more people chose to live in the suburbs?

Home Entertainment

Television caught on slowly. At first, television screens displayed only in black and white, and they were very expensive. However, as TV sets shrank in price and grew in size, almost everybody wanted one. By 1960, 9 out of 10 households had at least 1 television. Television brought news and entertainment into people’s homes. Commercials encouraged spending and buying.

Television also helped to make the 1950s a time when people wanted to look and act the same as everyone else. Many programs presented the same single view of the ideal white middle-class family: fathers knew best, mothers were loving and supportive, and children were always obedient.

Rock-and-Roll

In the mid-1950s, a new type of music appeared. Rock-and-roll combined the sounds of rhythm, blues, country, and gospel with a hard-driving beat. Adults worried that the music was too wild. However, many teenagers liked rock-and-roll because it provided an opportunity for them to show their independence. Teenager was a word first used in the 1950s to describe someone between 13 and 19 years old.

Chuck Berry does his famous “duck walk,” 1964.

African American singers Chuck Berry and Little Richard gained national fame. From Texas came Buddy Holly, and from California, Latino singer Richie Valens. No one attracted more attention than Memphis’s Elvis Presley. His slick hair, sideburns, and steamy dancing alarmed parents but made Elvis a hit with teenagers. They dressed like him, bought his records, and nicknamed him “the King.”

An Underlying Discontent

Not all Americans in the 1950s were happy about the emphasis on getting and spending. A small group of writers and artists criticized what they saw as the growing materialism of American society and its lack of individuality. Novelist Jack Kerouac coined the term beat, meaning “weariness with all forms of the modern industrial state.” Middle-class observers called Kerouac and others like him beatniks. Kerouac’s best-selling novel, On the Road, influenced many young Americans.

Most Americans paid little attention to these signs of discontent. Soon, however, a growing outcry could not be ignored.

READING CHECK

Understand Effects How did the increase in the popularity of cars affect the United States?

Lesson Check

Why did inflation become a problem after World War II ended?
How did the GI Bill of Rights help veterans returning from war?
What were the beatniks rebelling against?
Recognize Multiple Causes What factors contributed to the baby boom?
Identify Cause and Effect How did television change politics and society?
Writing Workshop: Support Thesis with Details List details that support your thesis about changes to the United States after World War II. You will use these details as you write the essay at the end of the Topic.

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